Congress is back on the job today, at least in the Senate. The House just had to have one more day off to refresh them for the ideological agenda-setting ahead. The return to session comes at a time when polls show a total collapse in confidence in Congress’ ability to do their job, and a general pessimism about the prospects for a turnaround in the economy. The big story of the week will be the President’s jobs speech on Thursday. But what will Congress do when left to their own devices?

Exceedingly little. The House’s first three bills of the week are from the suspension calendar. In other words, they are noncontroversial pieces of legislation, on such important public matters as “Authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the District of Columbia Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run.” The rest of the week will consist of the kickoff of House Republicans’ anti-regulatory agenda, premised on the mistaken belief that over-regulation is costing jobs in the private sector. Not only is this not true, but the public sector will suffer if monitors and regulators get called off the job, to say nothing of the suspension of capital upgrades from factories if major regulations are delayed. So the House will pursue an anti-jobs agenda over the next couple of months.

As for the Senate, today they have one federal judicial nomination to attend to. After that they will consider a cloture vote on a motion to proceed for the patent reform bill, which has for some reason become a talking point for the President when he discusses jobs. I don’t know if you can find one economist to tell you that the patent bill will be an immediate job creator, but that’s the President’s story and he’s sticking to it.

The Senate will attempt to pass the House version of the bill, so they don’t have to return it to the lower chamber. After years of the House having to accept whatever the Senate produces, now we have the other way around. And it could get difficult:

But debate is brewing again over so called “fee diversion,” a popular provision that would have given the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office full control of the fees it collects.

Critics have accused congressional appropriators of siphoning off nearly $1 billion from the Patent and Trademark Office to fund other programs. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and others argued that when the fees don’t fund patent services, they become a de-facto tax on patents. The White House expressed concern that the House version didn’t end fee diversion, but has not indicated that it would stand in the way.

House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who forged the companion House version, was forced to compromise with congressional appropriators and weaken the fee-diversion protections earlier this year.

This may not derail the bill, but certainly Coburn has experience at bill derailment. But since the patent bill represents corporate interests fighting with each other over how best to rig the economy for their purposes, I’m not sure why I should care. I should care about patents in the abstract, particularly about ending the patent protection that forces prescription drug prices higher here than anywhere in the world, but I’m not sure why I should care about this bill.

The only other bill on the horizon with a chance to pass both houses in the near future is the set of free trade agreements, but given Mitch McConnell’s op-ed today, accusing the White House of deliberately holding up the process, there’s less reason to believe that they’ll succeed. Republicans want to kill the Trade Adjustment Assistance provisions that the President demanded as a sweetener for Democrats to get the bills through.

By the middle of the month, the FAA authorization runs out, and by the end of the month the highway authorization expires. And there is emergency supplemental funding of FEMA that must be done to pay for the damages from Hurricane Irene and other disasters. So Congress will do well just to avoid pitfalls in the next month, let alone create anything new.

All in all, there’s not much to dispel the belief that Congress is paralyzed to do anything about our historic jobs crisis. Hopefully some thoughts are being made to programs that can be carried out without their participation.

Of course we all know that nothing of consequence is going to happen until after the next election. The house in intent on blowing up everything they can and the Senate can’t function except to prevent things from getting passed. No matter which way legislation moves it’s going nowhere.

The President is more or less irrelevent. Republicans are not going to let any initiative of his get anywhere and Obama has shown an unwillingness to use what Excecutive authority he has so it seems unlikely there will be any action from the White House.

So stap on your helmets, boys and girls ’cause it’s goin’ to be one HELL of a ride!

There’s precious little difference between the two of ‘em, albeit I thought I heard Big Dick Cheney *praising* Hils this weekend on some talk show or another. Geez, if Hils is getting warm praise from the Executioner, what’s next?? Sez it all… no palpable difference between so-called “Republicans” and putatiive “Democrats.” And guess who’s STILL running the show, kids???

I have an idea to improve the performance of our shamefully inept congress.

Make them run a gauntlet of….us. Yes, every day when they leave their “job”, they
shall have to walk through a mob if unemployed 99er’s. Let them be clawed at
by unsavory persons with no health insurance, socialist teachers and others
they refuse to represent. I think it would help to…..reconnect them.

Would it be fair to suggest that none of the “declared” and none of the “undeclared”, what shall we call them …”condidates” … for the office of the presidency of the United States of America IS or appears to be relevant to what the people of the US and the people of the rest of the world actually NEED?

Desperately need?

If these “candidates” are NOT, in fact, or by the wildest strech of honest imagination, relevant to the real needs of the real human world, then should the rest of us who are able to discern both the needs and the uselessness of Presidential, and on the topic of DDay’s post, the equally useless and mendacious CONGRESSIONAL “candidates” … suggest that true CHANGE is not merely desirable but essentailly necessary? Unless someone wants to step up and publicly defend or endorse ANY SINGLE ONE of them, then is it not time to begin to seriously think beyond the inevitable continuing FAILURE that virtually ALL of the “candidates” actually “represent”?

If the political class has no genuine interest in anything but themselves, and I think Michael Brenner’s “take” on Obama is somewhat “universal” in its application to those who happily seek public office, then is it not time, tanbark, to consider alternatives, on a most fundamental level? To seriously imagine and begin to plan for what must be embraced beyond the myths and deadly “games” of the present “political” world and its destructive “flat-earth” perspectives? Does not the same need attend current day “flat-earth” economic notions, as well? And nihilistic military myths, also?

Is it not time to shed the infantile notion of “leaders” as being special and above everyone else? Especially when it is clearly revealed that such “exceptionalism” is but a crock and a continuing danger to reason, to understanding and to human life on this planet, itself?

She won’t run. Have you seen photos of her lately? She looks like death warmed over. I think Hillary has finally, irrevocably come to understand her limits. I don’t expect her to continue as SofS after 2012, I don’t think she can continue.

I supported her in the primary but I wouldn’t support her now. We need an entirely new slate. The current governing personnel is brain dead. Every idea they have is moldy. Not just useless, but diseased and malign. They don’t have a useful or helpful thought amongst them. Used up, worn out, empty. And dangerous for their utter incompetence and conceit.

It’s a line from the banks while on Martha’s Vineyard and a good
rest for smiley speeches.

There is scapegoating and arrogance to lay to rest, but aside from that,
Ralph Nader, and then also, aside from any early shortcomings,
Dennis Kucinich, who will make the changes that actually work for
capitalism and free enterprise a lot more than what Mr. Obama has been
doing.

Reactionary politics plus a dose of watered down pro-people, fair, honest
economics is what defined the near-entirety of the 19th Century.

I think things go much better when congress in in recess. IN TExas, our legislasturds only meet every other year or if the governor calls them into special session. Since mostly they just screw things up or waste time and money, maybe we should ocnsider that for the U.S. congress as well.

They may not be talking about it publicly in the Halls of the Hill, but the FISA expires on December 8th. I’m sure they are behind the scenes trying to get some more ideas of why the Patriot Act needs less oversight.

There is absolutely no evidence that Hillary would be more effective than Obama. That’s another hope and change dead end that reveals desperation politics. The better move would be to vote everyone out of Congress and install people who can push the president and local govts in the direction of we the people. Or start a revolution. Any country that could seriously entertain Rick Perry as a president is not going to make it off life support.

PLease corect me if I am wrong. THis guy spent 3 years in the senate and probably 4 years as POTUS. Good luck finding somebody with THOSE specific credentials. And he will get, what, $100K a speech to say….exactly….what about what?

You have to realize that those “public officials” that support this sort of takeover are completely brain dead. Can’t they see they are next on the chopping block? I mean, seriously! If they allow the governor to take over everything and remove officials, they might just be next!

Mustang Cobras are really neat, beautiful, America muscle cars. They are very rare and we need to protect. As a “carguy”,, I think the Cobra subsidy should be renewed to protect thos rare and valuable cars and the history of American automotive ingenuity.

The Western governments of the world are broken. They have all bought into the austerity angle. Cut spending and all will be well, except that isn’t what happens. What has to happen to change this paradigm? Maybe another big war, like last time?

IT has actually been made to be all about restructuring of corporate properties and asset-transfer within rigged markets. The last leg of the biggest organizational restructuring, asset-stripped and operations shutdown is being visited upon the US (Europe picking up steam right now). The mass layoffs in the early 2000s were an unheeded wake up call. Congress’ gridlock is on command by the 1%ers.

And how long have the people of the US fallen for that? For decades while the damage was being done from the inside out.

On edit: The plan is that there won’t be books even if we are able to read them and we are still around (I’m drawing from analysis of the corporate reorg of the former USSR and the tells by 1%er mouthpieces like Ron Paul who believe we should live in the 1900s).

Read one of the chapters of Zinn yesterday that was written after the book was first published around 1980. Here’s an email I sent to someone else on a related topic:

Zinn argues that Ds & Rs are all alike, supporters of the establishment. That FDR only went as far as he did to “preserve” the system. Zinn’s book was published around 1980 but he updated it twice, I think, bef he died last year. One of the new chapters, which I read yesterday, is titled something like: The Carter-Reagan-Bush Continuum. We would know about Reagan & Bush, but he picks out what Carter actually did that’s along the same lines. Like support repressive dictatorships regardless of his human rights rhetoric, like starting deregulation of S&Ls, which led to that debacle, like deregulating energy prices so oil corps could make gigantic profits, without doing anything for consumers or poor people to help them pay for the higher costs.

Good post, DW. Right now, our government is all about protecting the status quo.

We sure need change, but what kind of change? Where we and the teapottiers differ is that they are dishonest and crazy enough to want to do MORE AND WORSE of the same bloody idiocy that bush created and which Barack Obama has sustained; the policies that are ruining us.

Of Hillary, I agree with the people on here who note what an unattractive candidate she’d make, with her track record and after most of a term as Obama’s SecState. Will that stop her from bailing on him and running at him? I dunno. When it became apparent that she and her “braintrust” had decided that kissing rightwing butt was the path to the White House, and! after 8 years of Bush, her stupidity was breathtaking. Any democrat we elected was going to have a wonderful chance to move the country in a progressive direction. That Obama has utterly squandered that chance does NOT make Hillary any more attractive…except, as I said, as a payback monkeywrench on him.

There is another possibility; and it gets more possible with every week:

He might do the LBJ thing and just bail on a second term. I think that would be the best-case scenario for us. That would be ollie-ollie-in-free for Hillary and anyone else.

The brawl to fill the vacuum would be fractious, but no more so than it will be if he tries for another 4 years.

Of no relevance is that doing that would recoup a little of my respect for him. More importantly, If he does it, I think it will mean that whatever happens in the presidential race, we will keep more congressional seats, way more, than if he runs.

I think Carter was forced through the MIC extruder just like any other POTUSes including Ike. It’s the plan for the outsiders (us) to be informed about it after the fact as if it weren’t already self evident.

The Machine is much larger than one person. Our collective responsibility to bring it to a grinding halt remains and the sands of time are running through the hour glass. We have already been on notice since the creation of this nuclear business.

It is a sad state of affairs the choices we have. As for me I am writing in single payer. The sooner we stop talking about D’s or R’s the sooner we can move forward. The two party system is dead to me. My 2 cents.

For a long time now, the GOP “moderates” have been whoring around with their crazies…spending the night with them, knocking holes in the sheetrock and then getting up early, leaving 5 bucks on the dresser, and sneaking out for the general.

Different story this time; some serious “money” is going to have to change hands. :o)

Watching Romney go into panic mode and try to out-peckerhead the peckerheads, is a joy to watch. :o)